Robert Stolz
Robert Stolz was born in Graz, Austria, on August 25, 1882. His parents were musical, his father being a successful conductor and teacher, and his mother a concert pianist. Robert’s music study took place first with his father, then with Robert Fuchs in Vienna and Humperdinck in Berlin. In 1901 he assumed his first post as conductor, at an opera house in Brunn. When he was twenty-five he was appointed conductor of the Theater-an-der-Wien in Vienna where he remained twelve years, directing most of the masterworks in the field of Austrian and German operettas. His own career as composer of operettas had begun in 1903 with Schoen Lorchen produced in Salzburg. Since then Stolz has written music for about sixty operettas, scores for more than eighty films, and a thousand songs in all. His music is in the light, graceful, ebullient style that has characterized Viennese operetta music since the time of Johann Strauss II. His most famous operettas are: Die lustigen Weiber von Wien (1909), Die Gluecksmaedel (1910), Die Tanzgraefin (1921), Peppina (1931), Zwei Herzen in dreiviertel Takt (1933), Fruehling im Prater (1949) and Karneval in Wien (1950). In 1938 Stolz came to the United States where for several years he worked in Hollywood. After the end of World War II he returned to Vienna, remaining active as a composer not only in that city but also in Berlin and London.
Stolz’ most famous song is “Im Prater bluehn wieder die Baeume” (“In the Prater the Trees Are Again Blooming”), a glowing hymn not only to a district in Vienna famous for its frolic and amusement but even more so to the city of Vienna itself.
A waltz from his operetta, Two Hearts in Three-Quarter Time (Zwei Herzen in dreiviertel Takt) is perhaps one of the most celebrated pieces in three-quarter time written in Vienna since Lehár, and it is loved the world over. This operetta originated in 1931 as a German motion-picture which won accolades around the world for its charm and freshness, for which Stolz wrote a score that included his famous waltz. It was then adapted for the stage by Paul Knepler and J. M. Willeminsky and introduced in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1933. This delightful text concerns the trials and tribulations of producing an operetta. That operetta is accepted for production on the condition that a good waltz melody is written for it, and the composer Toni Hofer gets his inspiration for that tune from lovely Hedi, the young sister of the librettist. This waltz, of course, is the title number, which, in its lilt and buoyancy and Viennese love of life, is in the best tradition of Viennese popular music.